


Pain Of Mortality

by ElisaPhoenix



Series: Marvel What If's [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Celestial Peter Quill, Character Death, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Scott Lang, M/M, Minor Tony Stark/Stephen Strange, Other, Peter Quill Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisaPhoenix/pseuds/ElisaPhoenix
Summary: Things weren't supposed to be this way.
Relationships: Scott Lang/Peter Quill
Series: Marvel What If's [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1519460
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Pain Of Mortality

**Author's Note:**

> Get wrecked.

"Push harder Spaceman!"  
"If I push any harder I'm going to break you _and_ the couch!"  
"Not if you do it at an angle!"  
"Oh my god! Can you two go one day without having a conversation that sounds suggestible?!" Cassie complains from up in her room. 

She had her door open while she did her homework and Diana drew in the sketchbook that Steve had gifted her. Cassie usually ignored her parents when they talked like that when she had her door open, but Diana was with her and who knew how much she actually understood. She was tempted to close her bedroom door, but she liked how much more open her room felt when it wasn't. 

"What does suggestible mean?" The little girl asks and Cassie sighs.  
"Umm...ask Mom okay?" The teen deflects and thankfully Diana nods. She at least understood that were some things she could ask Cassie, and some things that she should ask her parents.  
"OW! Fuck me in the liver--" Quill swears and it's followed by laughter.  
"What does that even _mean_?!" Scott cackles.  
"Shut up or I'll spank you."  
Cassie groans and gathers her things. "Come on Dia. Let's go up to your room."

Diana nods again and gathers her art supplies before climbing down off of Cassie's bed and following her pseudo sister down the stairs to the elevator. As they disappear onto the elevator, Quill pushes Scott out of the way and shoves the couch into place and looks at the younger man with a huff.

"There. Happy now?"  
Scott smiles and wraps his arms around the celestial's neck. "Yes. Thank you." He gives Quill a quick peck on the lips and then moves away toward the kitchen. "Want a beer?"  
Quill grins and follows him to the kitchen. "Nah. Think I'll have some juice."  
"There's only one more left."  
"Dibs!" The celestial yells as he runs to the fridge to get to it first.

He shouts triumphantly when he snags the last Capri sun out of the fridge and holds it out of Scott's reach when the younger jumps onto Quill's back. His husband was clearly taking a page out of Cassie's book, but he was unaware that jumping onto his back did absolutely nothing. Quill gave him an A for effort though.

"Give it to me Spaceman!"  
"The juice or my--"  
"THE JUICE YOU HORNDOG!"  
Quill cackles. "Only if you give me another kiss."  
"You're insufferable." Scott mumbles half-heartedly before kissing the god again. He snags the juice pouch while doing so and hops off of Quill's back with a happy grin, but before he can even take the straw off, the alarms blare and Scott pouts. "Later." He promises to the inanimate object.

Quill snorts as they go up to their room to gear up for what could only be an Avengers level threat. Every once in a while Quill wondered who or what Scott loved more. Him or juice. He even teased the younger man about it sometimes, and the usual response was Scott taking a sip of his juice while trying to give Quill an innocent look. At least an attempt at one. It always came across as impish or teasing.

When they were both ready, he and Scott walked over to the balcony where Scott shrunk down after grabbing the lapels of Quill's jacket. It ensured that Scott would stay on his shoulder when he was ant sized, and then the celestial would vault the railing and free fall for half a second...much to Scott's very vocal displeasure. It always made him a little motion sick whenever Quill pulled that stunt. There was some dramatic groaning in Quill's ear as he turned on the jets on his boots and flew properly to the battle scene, and he snickers.

"One of these days I'm going to puke." Scott grumbles.  
"Well it's a good thing you didn't get a chance to drink your juice." 

There was some more unintelligible grumbling from Scott through the comm before he hopped off Quill's shoulder and onto a flying ant. Riding on the god's shoulder was faster but once they got to the vicinity of the battle, Scott went off. It left Quill to find a dense group of minions that was ganging up on Natasha and landed in the middle of them with his godly strength, the shockwave knocking them over.

"You're late." She says as she reloads her guns and Quill scoffs.  
"You're welcome. Anyway, I like wearing sweatpants instead of my battle clothes all day, every day like someone I know."  
"You weren't even wearing sweatpants today." Natasha points out.  
"That wasn't...whatever. See if I help your ass next time."

Quill shoots another minion coming up behind the assassin and she looks at him with an arched eyebrow, which the celestial rolls his eyes at. Ever since joining this psychotic family, it became second nature to protect them so he tended to do things his mouth was otherwise saying. Both Scott and Cassie called him a teddy bear for it and Quill figured he probably earned that. Nevertheless, the two fought side by side while Stephen took on the actual supervillain in charge of the minions. The small army was obviously just a distraction in the hopes that whoever had a stick up their ass could pick off the Avengers one by one, but most of the team had experience with dealing with that situation.

Which meant the supervillain had not done their research. There was the Chitauri invasion, Ultron, the whole war with the stones...one would think any potential bad guy would think twice. There always had to be someone out there who thought they had a better plan though, as annoying as it was. They fought anyway. The kids got civilians out of the way while the team dealt with the minions and Stephen went head on with the main guy. The villain was favoring some sort of electromagnetic field for defense and the sorcerer was trying to get him to put his guard down so Tony could fly in and disable it at the very least.

Everything was going fine until an hour into the fight, when the villain's voice boomed across the battlefield. "One more move and he's fried!"

Quill and Natasha turn their attention to him when even the small army stops their assault, and his heart drops to his stomach when he sees Scott in the villain's grasp. The douchebag was standing at the top of a building with his hand clamped around Scott's neck and holding the younger man over the side. Quill could see that his spouse was desperately trying to get his suit to work so he could shrink out of the man's grip, but it was probably fried by the magnet head. The anger came quickly when Scott was in noticeable pain even from the distance Quill was at because there was a guarantee that Scott's scars were flaring up.

"Quill...don't." Natasha warns and takes the risk of grabbing his arm to anchor him. He wasn't in the state to throw her off and Natasha was trying to keep it that way.

He also didn't want to be the reason Scott was hurt anymore.

Stephen had stopped his assault and Quill could hear him trying to hopefully talk down the villain, but the celestial couldn't hear what was being said. The conversation only lasted seconds but it felt like hours...and the unthinkable happened. The supervillain looked like he was going to release Scott safely but then he looked directly at Quill and sent jolts of electricity into Scott. The thief convulsed in his hand and when he was finished, he tossed Scott off and away from the building. The anguish was enough to push back his growing berserk state and Quill bolted forward to run to where Scott had landed. There were shouts from their teammates from the horror they witnessed and they attacked the villain and his minions with a vengeance as Quill ran over to Scott.

He found him halfway down the street and lying motionless against the wall of a ruined building. His helmet was still down and it had Quill's heart in his throat. Scott was not only electrocuted, but he was thrown from the top of a building without his helmet up.

The odds weren't looking good.

"Scott!" Quill chokes out as he closes the distance between himself and the injured man. He kneels in front of him and looks him over with misting eyes. "Baby?"

He wills his light into his hands and places one at the back of Scott's neck while placing the other over his heart. Panic and even more anguish filled Quill when he felt nothing underneath his hand. No heartbeat. 

"No, no, no. Don't do this to me baby." The celestial pours his healing energy into Scott but when nothing happens he sobs. "I can't lose you too. _Please._ "

He sat there, continuously trying to heal what the small logical part of his mind knew couldn't be mended. Scott was unresponsive.

He was _dead_.

Quill would no longer be able to look into honey-gold eyes and feel like he was falling into paradise. There would be no one to hold at night, to dance or sing with...he lost his best friend. His lover, his better half...his soulmate. The god felt like his heart was ripped from his chest and repeatedly stomped on before it was incinerated in front of him and it _hurt_. It was one loss too many and Quill couldn't stand it, he let the god in him take over after that with no regards to the consequences. His reason for living was murdered and the asshole was going to pay for it.

He saw red after that. He was only vaguely aware of the ethereal roar he let out before wailing on everything in sight. He didn't know whether it was friend or foe but he no longer cared. His heart was shattered and he couldn't cope anymore. There was screaming, shouting, and eventually someone tried to hold him down but he managed to throw them off the first few times. Whoever it was either got stronger or there was more than one person because the last thing Quill remembered was cool blue eyes and a simple, quietly spoken command.

"Sleep."

Then everything went dark.

=================

Stephen sighs tiredly as the door to the cryo chamber is closed and Tony presses the button to seal the god sleeping inside. The spell Stephen used to incapacitate the raging god took a lot out of him, and when they tried waking Quill again to see if it helped calm him, he only went on another rampage. There was a unanimous decision to put Quill under until they either found a way to calm the god or if the world was going to end. The celestial was the only one who could fix the galaxy.

So the protection of Quill's new resting place fell onto Stephen if they couldn't find a way to calm him. If Stephen passed, the responsibility would fall to the sorcerers at Kamar-Taj.

"I think Quill was the goal all along." Tony says quietly.  
"I think so too." Stephen agrees just as quietly. "He had no sense of friendlies and non...he was going after _everyone_. That person knew he was a god, and knew his weakness."  
Tony rubs his eyes. "We've lost Scott. I...I'm still wrapping my head around it. He was part of this family...and I'm still waiting for him to walk through the door to come smack Quill for being overprotective."  
"What are we going to do about Cassie?" Stephen whispers.  
"Give Maggie a call. We can tell Cassie she's welcome to stay, but if she wants to go back to her mom, she can do that too."  
"We'll take care of Scott?"

Tony looks over at Stephen and pulls him into a tight hug after kissing his temple.

"We'll take care of Scott."

That was the end of it. Once Quill was successfully cryogenically frozen and showed no signs of waking and trying to break free, they left the room. Tony went to make preparations for Scott's funeral and Stephen went to the medbay to check on the team members that were injured in the process of trying to hold Quill. Steve, Bucky, and even Thor were a little banged up, and Natasha managed to get away with a few bruises.

To everyone's surprise, Cassie stayed at the tower. She may have lost her father, and she may have only been able to look at Quill through frosted glass, but the Avengers were her family too. She did visit her mom more often though.

Quill?

He remains frozen to this day.


End file.
